Football gambling levy proposed in the UK

The Football Association has suggested setting a tax on football betting to fund improvements in the grass roots game.

UK.- Fulham owner Shahid Khan withdrew his €675 million offer and frustrated the Football Association’s (FA) plan of selling Wembley Stadium as it needed the 127-member council support. However, chief executive Martin Glenn has proposed to set a levy on football gambling to fund improvements in the grass roots game.

“France has effectively a tax on gambling. We would call it a fair return on football gambling,” Glenn told the Daily Telegraph and added: “All those betting companies use our intellectual property to have people lay bets, so why wouldn’t a small percentage of that be put into the thing that made that possible in the first place? We, as football, could approach the government and say ‘Have you thought about something like that?’

“It doesn’t need to be a big lump sum. We’ve got £64million going into the Football Foundation between the three of us (FA, Premier League and government) – imagine if it was £80m or £100m. If we could get to that it would be brilliant,” Mr Glenn stated.

FA’s CEO assured that the association doesn’t want to take debt to fund the estimated €16.8 million annual cost of keeping a competitive profile for the stadium against other venues. “Part of our business plan is to pay off our debt (on Wembley) by 2024. People have said ‘why don’t you borrow money from the TV rights?’, but it doesn’t feel right,” he explained.